The bear is happy to be back

America actually was the "same thing" under Clinton as it was under Reagan but what you're talking about is an estimated 50 million people being locked away and many dying in Siberian gulags from 1930 to 1950. Many of these prisoner's crimes were related to Stalin's demand that all art reflect "realism" as he saw it. An aircraft design group didn't perform so they were sent to the Gulags. Have relatives living abroad, off you go to work in the mines in Siberia. Otto Trepper tried to warn the USSR about Hitler's impending attack from Paris, after the war no medal, no thank you, off to the Gulags. Write something that didn't sit quite right with the party and off you go to the gulags sure set the face of Soviet communism to stay. Come to think of it, what happens when you write something critical of Putin these day, sure have been a lot of writers dying in Russia lately. I can name names if you like.

Communism / socialism as it is practiced is a philosophy that crushes the individual to fit the collective. The proud nail is always pounded down. Innovation is looked upon as suspect. Watch our grand American socialists suck up to Hugo Chavez as he steals private property for the good of the collective just as Castro made made Cuba into a welfare state sucking money from the Soviet Union for decades. The world fed your glorious Russia for much of its 80 years because under the socialist system your own grain rotted in the grainery and dropped onto the tracks from shoddy train cars or was left in the fields because the people had no vested interest in harvesting grain for the collective as long as they themselves got fed.

I visited the USSR several times, well and long after Stalin descended into hell. I saw the lines of people standing at the "State" stores for crappy shoes, meat, bread, clothes. I saw the average Russian living like crap while the average American, Brit, West German, etc. lived like kings in comparison. The "black market" was the only way the people could survive as more than animals. They stole from the state as a way of life and sold anything they could to live better, live like a human should. Criminals, thieves etc. stayed on the street because to the Communist Party, even in the 1970's and 80's the real important criminal was one who dares question the party and its policies. It's no wonder that when communism fell apart they would resort to the same criminal life style they had formed under communism. A few short years isn't time enough to reform what 80 years of tyranny did to a whole nation. Yeah, it was wild, theft was rampant, crime everywhere with everyone making a lousy buck any way they could but Putin didn't really even give anything a chance, he just resorted to the old school socialist tricks. Who could blame them if when confronted by freedom they chose to retreat back to what they had known for nearly a century and it fit Putin's agenda very well. Most of the real big criminals were Putin's old pals from the KGB anyway. What a coincidence I can name names on them too. All people deserve the freedom to choose, the freedom to express and even to dissent without fear of their own government putting them away in jail for thought crimes or killing them. Did you know that the scariest thing for a Russian in the USSR was a knock on the door, I hear that more doors are being knocked on once again.

Breshnev, Andropov and the rest were all a bunch of lovable teddy bears.
Only uncle Joe was mean.

iluvfreebeer wrote:Breshnev, Andropov and the rest were all a bunch of lovable teddy bears.
Only uncle Joe was mean.

Thanks for the laugh. Does that mean that Uncle Joe was a bit of a bully? Nah, he just didn't care about world opinion and was more open about it.

it wasn't all rosy, far from it, but there was definitely a lot of exaggeration on your side to emphasize the bad stuff, culture still managed to thrive under socialism, people were still people, we weren't the mindless drones you portrayed us to be for 80 years just because we didn't have any political voice.

"It wasn't rosy" = 50,000,000 people dying of deprivation, neglect, and hard labor in the Gulags for thought crimes or mere suspicion. The soviets locked up or killed off everyone with a brain. Stalin killed off nearly every capable military commander they had in 1937 and put political hacks with little ability in charge.

Actually the number of people Stalin murdered is only estimated as about 43,000,000 with the remaining 7,000,000 divided up between the other Soviet leaders.

Let's have some examples of culture that "managed to thrive" under communism / socialism in the USSR that would not have gotten someone shipped off to the Gulag if caught doing it.

My contention is that communism / socialism in the USSR and everywhere else it has spread views its people as cows, draft horses, sheep who do what they are told and think what they are told to think or face punishment and / or death.

Popov wrote:I can't believe you even went there, especially knowing what we know now about the nazis.

Nazis killed fewer than Stalin.